


#40-49

by KatherineBly



Series: The Prompted Oneshots [2]
Category: Newsies - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:49:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29764728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatherineBly/pseuds/KatherineBly
Summary: This first chapter? All OCs. The rest are essentially BillDarcy. Sorry.
Series: The Prompted Oneshots [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2187615





	1. Found

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter? All OCs. The rest are essentially BillDarcy. Sorry.

It's said that the newsies come to the Lodging House as Lost Boys, and when they find their place, they are found.

Sandwich, the newest of the group, and fresh out of the Workhouse, had yet to be found. Socks, the newsie who'd pulled him out of the burning workhouse and into the Lodge, had long since found her place on the windowsill where she slept, and as second in command to their leader.  
Moth had found her place after the last leader, Jack Kelly had left, and also before anyone else could remember as the current leader and first successful girl newsie.

Others had found their place gardening on the fire escape, in the square at suffrage meetings, working part(going on full)-time jobs at the vaudeville theatres, or the like.

Sandwich, however, had failed to find his place.  
Sitting in the fire escape one clear evening, he began talking to nobody but possibly the stars.

"Moth says that we're lost boys until we find our place, but I think maybe I'll be lost forever. I lost my Papa when my Mama had me and I lost my Mama when she drowned herself, and I lost my name when they took me into the workhouse, and I lost my hair when I had to hide from the workhouse as a newsie... What if I loose me too?" And so Sandwich had a very one-sided conversation.

"Uh, kid?" Socks finally opened the window she usually slept against. "Talking to yourself is how folks start to go mad, you wanna talk?" She offered, standing up and walking over, still hand sewing purple and green ribbons to a white strip of fabric.  
"Am I lost?" He asked. Socks sat down.  
"What?" She asked.  
"Am I lost? Because there are some things you can lose and then find them again, like the North star, and the ISS and Oreon, and there are some things you can't find again, like your dead mother, and your original name, and... and..." He stuttered, trailing off and burying his head in his hands.  
"Sometimes... All the time..." Socks put her sewing down. "You have to get lost to be found." She told the seven-year-old.

"So... When will I get found?" Sandwich asked, looking up at the inky sky, not quite black, more a deep blue.  
"...I don't know."  
"Can you find it?" Socks looked over.  
"I can't find your place, Sand', you have to-"  
"No, the North star." Sandwich interrupted.  
"...No."  
"It's over there." The younger pointed it out with great ease.

There was a short pause.  
"You found the North Star... You found your place. What else can you find?"  
"Maybe ten constellations and two planets. Or more constellations."  
"The newsies don't have a astronomer yet. How does that sound?"

Sandwich smiled.  
"I like that a lot."

And, that simply, yet that complexly, Sandwich was found with the newsies. Just like that.


	2. Prideful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darcy thinks too much.

"I don't believe in pride." Were the words Bill woke up to.  
"What?" He murmured, too tired to think straight. Darcy sat up against the headboard, fully awake, had been for hours.  
"I said, I don't believe in pride." Darcy repeated, blowing a black curl of hair from his view.  
"Okay." Bill accepted it, sitting up next to him.  
"Are you going to question it?" The Reid asked.  
"Not yet." The blond Hearst replied. "Maybe at breakfast."  
"I'm not hungry." Darcy told him matter-of-fact-ly. Bill sighed.  
"Eat something and I'll listen to your thoughts on nonexistent pride?"  
Darcy looked over at the bargain and sighed.  
"Alright." He agreed after a moment.

×××××××××××××××××××

"Let's hear it, then." Bill stated.  
"Well, if you think about it, we're not proud, we're just showy. So, we're not really proud, we're just glad."  
"You need to use less of your brain and more of your digestive system."  
"See, when we consider ourselves proud, we're really just admitting that we have, are now, or are going to show off. You're never quietly proud, you're just pleased. So if you are proud, then you're not quiet, and when you're not quiet, you're outspoken, and to be outspoken is to be, in this case, showy."  
"So you won't use pride as a word anymore?" Bill frowned a little. "Also, eat." He ordered gently. Darcy picked up a fork, pointing it at Bill.  
"No I will not." He decided.  
"So... Are you going to Pride NY this year?"  
Darcy smiled.  
"Of course I'll go with you." He smiled.


	3. Summer's lovers

Nickels and dimes,  
A song at a time…

Darcy knew summers were the best.  
Not because he was away from school.  
Not because his father couldn't lay a hand on him.  
Not because his sister Jean couldn't force him into ballet.  
Not because his brother Ogden couldn't pester and threaten and tease.  
Not even because every August was sent away from New York City, in all it's smoggy, unclean and ruthlessly overcrowded glory.

But instead because every summer, July 31st to August 28th, was sent with Bill Hearst, away from the city, at the temple-like haven known as Hearst Castle, California.  
The grounds were extensive, the beaches were almost pure white, the sun never failed them and everything seemed to have a tad bit of extra luck.

Until now.

"No!"  
"Mama, please.."  
"I will not allow you on that outing! All that will happen is that you'll shoot something and catch some awful disease and become… become…" Darcy sighed quietly as Elenor, his mother fought over whether she should finish the sentence. He knew the ending anyway.  
"Mama, you know I don't hunt by choice, if I did shoot something I would never touch it for myself, and there is nothing wrong with you." He responded earnestly.  
Why did she always have to break down into tears and make Darcy feel awful.

WhiteLaw Reid, Darcy's father, glared at him as a heeded warning, pulling his wife into his arms.  
"You've ruined your mother, you dare ruin yourself and my good name-" He hissed to Darcy.  
The younger man winced at his tone, knowing exactly what was going to come of it if he won-- When he won.  
"I would never ruin your good name, Sir, I'm certain I wouldn't even know how.."  
"He didn't ruin…" Elenor sobbed quietly. WhiteLaw didn't truly care for it, he wanted to scare Darcy a great deal more than save him.

Also, however, he wanted to be shot of Darcy for a month, and sending him to California with better substitute parents than his biological ones did just that.  
"Yes he did, now shush, Darcy, go and pack." WhiteLaw spat. Darcy nodded, smiling a little, and thanked him as he left.

"Goodmorning, my doll." Bill whispered. Two or three weeks had passed, and the summer was going quite nicely. The sun shone through the shutters of the celestial suite, and Darcy groaned, curling into Bill's side to avoid the sudden light met upon waking up.  
"It's too bright to be awake.." Darcy mumbled to Bill, who chuckled softly, hands running through the other's raven-black hair. "If we wait until midday the sun will be directly above us and blocked out by the roofing."  
"We'll miss the train if we wait so much longer.." Bill smiled softly, and Darcy shot up to sit next to him.  
"The train?" He asked, with rather the excitement of a child. "Out to the city?"  
"Is there any other railtrack?" Bill laughed, letting go of Darcy's waist as the Reid kissed his cheek and stood up, collecting discarded clothes from the floor, taking Bill's shirt for himself.

The journey to the city was no more important to today's plot than the fact that Darcy's shirt that day was light blue and smelled of lavender.

"Is it the sheet music that interests you, Mr. Reid?" Bill asked nicely, appearing behind a greatly entranced Darcy, who nodded slowly, not even startled. "If I were to buy it for you..?"  
"I'd make you keep it, Mr. Hearst." Darcy breathed, looking up at a slightly amused Bill Hearst.  
"Oh really now?"  
"Music should pay for itself, not be paid for by the train fayre home."  
"Well, how noble.."  
"Thank you." And Darcy left the music shop. By the time Bill was drawn out by the gentle humming of an English Chestnut violin, Darcy already had more than enough small-ish change to buy the music that had interested him so much earlier.

Collecting nickels and dimes… A song at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The celestial suite of Hearst Castle though--  
> Named accurately.


	4. Raining

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING FOR MENTAL HOSPITALS.  
> I know that can be a major trigger for some people. There's nothing too graphic and I think this is the only one of that AU. The given... diagnoses' (I guess?) are Bipolar disorder and Anorexia, just for reference, incase any difference is made by it.

"Don't you miss the rain?" Darcy asked, standing at the window to the room, fingertips brushing against the glass.  
"No." Bill replied simply, still lying down, facing the wall and curled up a little.

Darcy knew he was just grumpy after a four-day high in his Bipolar streak.  
"Not at all?" He pressed quietly, perching on the windowsill and looking up at his roommate.  
Or, more realistically, his cell mate.

"Darcy, come here." Bill sat up on the hard-ish institution bed as he called the anorexic boy over.  
The Reid crawled up onto the top bunk, the Hearst pulling him to his side.  
"Rainy days in California were the worst of all, d'you see that?"  
"...I'm sorry?" Darcy didn't quite shake his head, not wanting to anger or depress the other any further.  
"That one rainy day we got, always right at the very end of June. Made my father angry, almost always at me, it depressed my mother, and I could never face either of them in such states.  
Not that they wouldn't come find me anyway." He muttered the last part and Darcy lay his head in Bill's lap, letting the Hearst play with dark curls as both comfort and distraction.

"I could never help but love the rainy days." Darcy whispered.  
"And why was that, pray tell?"  
"The way the city looked in the rain, so dreary it was beautiful, or on the estate the soft patterning sound, echoing very slightly, sometimes spitting down the chimneys, fire hissing at the cold... Everything."

"...maybe if I'd spent rainy days with you back then I'd miss them now."  
"We'll get out of here someday."  
"Yeah, when they put us into the next phase."  
"Bill, darlingest, I know you've been in here since you were fifteen, but I twelve. We are going to get out. And I'll have my rain, and you'll have your sun."  
"...maybe rainy days aren't so bad with you here."  
"Maybe... maybe."


End file.
